Daily Darwin

Hard to tell exactly what is going on here -- except that it's glorious.....

Darwin 12 28 24

Cowboy State Daily is Wyoming’s largest newspaper with Wyoming’s most experienced journalists. 

<title>Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 28, 2024 | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 28, 2024

 Hard to tell exactly what is going on here -- except that it's glorious.....

Anna-Louise Jackson

Tourism

 Following the directions from the Interstate 94 exit to the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, you might wonder if you’ve missed North Dakota’s new tourist destination, so seamlessly does the building blend into the prairie.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"That’s exactly the point. "}]

The architects who designed the library, which opened lasrt month, want visitors to draw as much inspiration from the exhibits inside the 95,000-square-foot modern marvel as they do from taking in the vast sweep of landscape outside.

And on a recent visit, it seemed that vision had been realized. 

While library visitors spanning all ages could be found crowding around the library’s many high-tech interactive elements, they also took time to relax in a rocking chair or trek up to the library’s roof to enjoy a 360-degree view of the 93-acre site. 

But be forewarned: The library is quickly becoming a popular tourist attraction, so you might want to book tickets ($26 adults) online in advance. 

In the first few weeks, 40,000 visitors flocked to the library, its executive director said.

While tickets are still available for most days in August, the website cautions that it’s the busiest month in Medora. 

“The Library expects to reach maximum capacity on many days and walk-up tickets may not be available,” according to a notice on the website.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Why North Dakota"}]

Word about the new library has spread, thanks partly to a pre-opening visit from President Donald Trump and a healthy dose of media coverage.

There’s also a novelty factor: Unlike most presidential libraries, where planning begins shortly after the president has left office, this one only started to take shape about six years ago and more than 100 years after Roosevelt’s death.

Though Roosevelt hailed from New York, the library’s planners chose North Dakota because of the significance it 

 held for the 26th president. After the death of his wife and mother on the same day in 1884, he retreated to the then-territory, where he owned the Elkhorn Ranch on the banks of the Little Missouri River.

In 2020, planners launched a competition for architects and unanimously selected a design inspired by a leaf atop two pebbles that was the brainchild of Craig Dykers, the library’s lead architect and co-founder of Snøhetta, a Norwegian architectural firm. 

In addition to the building’s design, Dykers wanted to give visitors a variety of opportunities — from a kidney-shaped boardwalk loop through the grasses next to the library to its living roof — to appreciate the uniqueness of the Badlands.

But as anyone who has visited this part of the West before can appreciate, the summer heat can be relentless, especially with little shade covering.

If you’re visiting this summer, you might want to opt for a morning entry and budget time to explore the boardwalk and roof when it's still relatively cool. The temperature can easily top 100 degrees.

The designers were well aware of how harsh this landscape can be, though, and planned for ways to provide visitors respite from the elements.

Most of the parking spots are shaded by a solar-paneled roof, which means your vehicle won’t be roasting in the sun all day. Many outdoor seating areas are shaded and the corridor that serves as the library’s main entrance is entirely under cover.

That shade was helpful because there was a long queue and about a 20-minute wait to bypass security and actually enter the exhibit.

At check-in, you’ll be handed an interactive RFID-enabled wristband and have the option to personalize your visit by registering basic information on an electronic kiosk and taking a photo, all of which come in handy for unlocking the exhibit’s many interactive elements.

As the gal greeting visitors said over and over: “You don’t have to do it, but I highly, highly recommend you do.” 

The library might well rank among the country's most technically advanced, and some of those elements work better than others for learning about the legacy of this one-of-a-kind dynamo.

The exhibit more or less winds you through Roosevelt’s life chronologically, though a central exhibit hall you’ll return to frequently can be trying to get through. 

After check-in, you’ll be greeted by the voice of actor Nick Offerman, who is heavily featured in the exhibit and invites you into the Roosevelt home, where the future president overcame a challenging and asthma-afflicted childhood.

From there, you’ll see the future conservationist's budding fascination with animals and nature take shape, navigate eccentric obsession with taxidermy in college, his falling in love and enduring a double whammy tragedy that forever shaped his life.

One of the exhibit’s most poignant moments is a dark room that holds only Roosevelt’s diary, opened to the page where, on Feb. 14, 1884, he marked the page with a large X and wrote, “The light has gone out of my life.”

That diary is one of relatively few original items on display; most others are replicas. That’s owing to many of his belongings being displayed elsewhere, namely at the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace National Historic Site in New York City and Sagamore Hill National Historic Site on New York’s Long Island.

But the items don’t have to be real to get a real sense of what shaped this man.

You can step inside a replica of his log cabin in North Dakota, sit around a campfire as cowboys joke about the “dandy,” head into battle with the Rough Riders in Cuba, track his political rise and fall, experience the shenanigans of the Roosevelt children during their years in the White House, tag along for his near-deadly post-presidential expeditions, and stand in the family’s summer home when more tragedy strikes and word goes out that “the old lion is dead.”

All throughout, there are display cases to pore over that contextualize Roosevelt’s sometimes-complicated legacy, tap your wristband to generate a photo of what you might have looked like during one of Roosevelt’s many eras, and you can even ask the late president a question of your choosing, which he’ll answer thanks to the magic of AI.

A young visitor asked AI. "Teddy how many countries existed" when he was president and, after a long delay, he offered a thoughtful response.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Keep an Open Mind"}]

Along with Offerman, you’ll hear a number of familiar voices throughout the exhibit, including George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Garth Brooks, Oprah Winfrey, José Andrés, and Doris Kearns Goodwin, who each take their own spin on reading Roosevelt’s famous 1910 “Man in the Arena” speech.

But one thing that’s surprising is that you won’t hear much of Roosevelt himself, even though some recordings of his speeches still exist.

Even without his voice, you might be surprised by what you learn about a politician who wouldn’t neatly fit into either of today’s dominant political parties. 

A familiar refrain throughout the exhibit is a visitor beginning what amounts to a fill-in-the-blank sentence by saying, “Oh wow, I had no idea that he ...”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"}],"text":"All of this is intentional. "}]

The experiential elements in the library are intended to go beyond exploring Roosevelt’s legacy and encourage visitors to think about their own civic obligations, as Edward O’Keefe, chief executive officer of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library Foundation, 

“We wanted to build a place where you can learn about, and from, Theodore Roosevelt, where you can connect with friends and family and nature so you can decide what change you want to see in the world,” O’Keefe said in a piece published by Fast Company.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Other Things To Do"}]

While the library has many places to sit and take a break from the exhibits, there’s also an on-site restaurant with options that are very good — albeit a bit pricey. If you arrive hungry, plan your meal accordingly, as many menu items were sold out by about 3 p.m.

Nearby Medora is teeming with plenty of kitschy tourist shops and you can easily drive the 36-mile loop in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in about two hours, with enough time to stop and snap photos of bison, prairie dogs, or a herd of wild horses. 

Medora might seem more bustling than in past visits, and while there are more lodging options now it remains a tourist trap of sorts. More plentiful (and affordable) options are in Glendive, Montana, about 60 miles west on I-94. 

There’s an additional bonus to staying over the border in Montana: Glendive is home to Montana’s largest state park, Makoshika State Park, where you can walk among badland formations where the fossil remains of many types of dinosaurs have been unearthed. The park’s entrance fee for nonresidents is $8.

Anna-Louise Jackson can be reached at: Jackson.Anna@gmail.com

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<title>Visiting The New High-Tech Teddy Roosevelt Library In Medora, North Dakota | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cowboy State Daily's Anna-Louise Jackson visited the new Theodore Roosevelt National Library in Medora, North Dakota. She highly recommends the journey as it offers a winding and interactive high-tech journey through the extraordinary life of America's 26th president.

Visiting The New High-Tech Teddy Roosevelt Library In Medora, North Dakota

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's business and tourism reporter, Renée Jean

Renée Jean

Will Grant still has the two horses, Chicken Fry and Badger, that he rode across Wyoming in the summer of 2019 when he retraced all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail. 

Chicken Fry was born in New Mexico, and no one knows for sure how old he is.

“He’s had some hard miles on him,” Grant said. “Not a hard life, but plenty of work. So we rope off them a little bit, but not too much, and they’re like trail horses.”

Some of those hard trail miles happened in a landscape that deeply respects its roots. Wyoming, Grant told Cowboy State Daily,  has cared for its Pony Express Trail better than other states.

“You can see it there,” Grant said. “It’s very well marked in Wyoming. Very well marked.”

Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are particularly bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

That’s left Grant wondering how Pony Express riders kept their feet and their hands warm, given that they were riding through South Pass in January of 1861.

“The winds through there are no joke,” he added.

These are just a few of the gritty details Grant learned about Wyoming as he rode through it on the back of a horse, surrounded by a vast, windswept sea of sagebrush. 

He had known from the outset that he would face the same brutal elements the pioneers did — shifting mud, relentless wind, desert conditions, mosquitoes, and the like.

But, as he wrote in his book, “The Last Ride of the Pony Express,” thinking about the hardships ahead of time and experiencing them firsthand are two very different things. 

That point became starkly clear under the flash of a sudden Wyoming summer storm. Grant and his two horses, he realized immediately, were the highest point on the landscape. They were walking targets clad in iron horseshoes. And there was nowhere for them to take cover. It was just miles of open sagebrush in every direction, as far as his eyes could see.

The crack of thunder overhead filled him with dread as he rode across the land in that gathering storm. He also gained a new appreciation for the 1860s couriers who wrote of learning to read the landscape in between blinding pulses of lightning strikes.

“I learned that the Pony Express as a mail service was a really impressive display of American entrepreneurship,” he said. “There’s no other country in the world that could have done the same thing given the same environmental parameters. There were no horses out there. There was no infrastructure on which to set up a fast horse mail relay over 2,000 miles to deliver a letter in 10 days.”

There were wild horses, and they were a huge danger to a lone rider managing two horses. Grant writes about that in his book, how careful he was to avoid either inciting an attack or losing his horses to that stallion’s wild harem.

The Mongols and the Romans and the Persians did have ancient horse relays to quickly traverse their kingdoms. But these were created in already civilized areas that their empires controlled, and those relays were fed and maintained by the full resources and might of those empires. 

America’s Pony Express was a business venture started completely from scratch, with no empire behind it at all, traversing a vast and empty land that was openly hostile. There were no resources from a surrounding empire to help them through all the places that lacked food, water and shelter. 

Pony Express riders didn’t wait for perfect conditions, though. They rode in all kinds of weather, making a 2,000-mile trip in a just 10 days. 

Grant took his time, compared to them. His journey lasted 142 nights.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Modern-Day Station Masters"}]

He also had something else the original 1860s riders didn’t. Wyoming ranchers — many of them descended from original homesteaders — who helped him all along the way, as did members of the modern-day Pony Express riders. The ranchers, in particular, were an informal network of modern-day station masters, ready and willing to help him all along the way.

Time and again, just as weather threatened to overwhelm him and his small string of horses, Grant would ride up on a private gate to find it already opened to him. The rancher before had let the next farm know he was on the way and to watch out for him.

These ranchers didn’t just grant him passage through their land. They would actively pull him out of a storm, offering secure pasture space and protection from the elements. There were often hot meals and a dry bunkhouse were included, as well as their stories.

“The traveling horseman still finds a lot of hospitality in Wyoming, I’ll tell you that,” Grant said. “People were good to me. Opening pasture gates, no worries. Really good people all along the way.”

There was the time a well-meaning rancher tried to talk him into taking an ornery mule with him … 

But warm hospitality and cheerful dinners and storytelling were more common. It was a powerful reminder that while the physical shelters of the 1860s may have crumbled, the human infrastructure of mutual aid remains intact across the Wyoming plains. It’s been actively kept alive behind the closed gates of modern cattle ranchers, many of whom are still living by the unwritten code of the West, handed down from one generation to the next.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Write What You Know"}]

Grant’s Pony Express ride wasn’t just a history fascination for him. He found in the ride a perfect intersection for the two halves of his life.

“I’m a journalist, and I mostly have been writing for magazines,” he said. “What I really wanted to do is write a book. The Pony Express emerged as a topic that I thought I could shed some light on because I worked as a horse trainer and a cowboy.”

Grant, born and raised in Littleton, Colorado, spent his summers cowboying on a ranch between Chugwater and LaGrange in Wyoming, studying under a foreman named Tim Sussex.

“Those were good years for me because Tim really showed me how to handle horses in a lot of different ways, but really how to be quiet with a horse,” he said. “That is the best thing you can do, get a ranch hand job on the wide open prairies of Wyoming.”

His first degree program was forestry and geology in Tennessee, after which he went back to horses, breaking colts in Larkspur, Colorado, then working for a ranch in Texas. 

In 2008, he went back to school to study journalism at University of Montana School of Journalism.

“I needed it,” he said. “I’d been training horses and doing ranch work for like eight years. I had to use a different part of my brain.”

When he went hunting for a book idea, the old writer’s advice — write what you know — stuck.

“I saw the Pony Express as a way to overlap my expertise with horses and write what you know,” he said. “I decided to dive into the Pony Express and I thought, ‘Well, obviously, I’m gonna have to just ride it. Travel it by horseback.’”

That, he added, was the “best summer of my life.” 

Even if it was the summer of 2019 — not the summer of ’69.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Trail Logic And Life"}]

Spending five months on the back of a horse gave him new perspectives on hardships and life. 

“When things are bad, you can expect they are going to get better,” he said. “If you have a bad camp, then the next night is almost certainly going to be better. And if you have two bad nights in a row, then your odds are even better that you’re headed for greener pastures.”

That simple trail logic helped him keep his morale intact through the inevitable stretches of cold and wet, hot and thirsty, tired and hungry all along the way.

He also learned more about his horses than he expected.

“I’ve been around horses my entire life,” he said. “But I learned a lot about their nonverbal communication. I learned you can tell a lot about a horse by listening to the way they walk.”

Any discomfort comes out in the sound of the hooves striking the ground.

He also noticed things about humans as well, including that they seem to care more about someone who is riding on the back of a horse than they do about someone who is on foot.

“They’re more likely to offer support because of the horses,” he said. “People cared about the wellbeing of the horses more than they cared about the wellbeing of me for sure. Having the animals with you opens up a lot of doors.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Next Book"}]

These days Grant lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where Chicken Fry and Badger have the run of the place, and Grant spends more time “wrangling sentences” than he does cattle.

He’s already knee-deep in his next book, which is about the ancestry of the American cowboy.

The research has already taken him to Mexico, Spain, and soon Morocco. Next summer he’ll tackle history that’s “closer to home.”

Whether that brings him back to Wyoming remains to be seen. But Wyoming will have its thread in the book regardless.

“I’ve got a lot of good Wyoming material built up over the years,” he said. “Horsebacking it across Wyoming for the Pony Express gave me a pretty good look at the country.”

And being a wrangler near Chugwater was a whole other dimension of the state and its cowboys.

After riding the Pony Express across Wyoming and sleeping under its stars, Grant may have left tracks that already blew away. But the stories Wyoming whispered to him in the night still live on, indelible memories that explain the code of the West in ways words never could.

Will Grant 7 N8 A8831 8 9 26

<title>Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming | Cowboy State Daily</title>

Cowboy and journalist Will Grant rode all 2,000 miles of the Pony Express trail on horseback. He said the trip gave him a newfound respect for Wyoming weather. Mosquitoes in Jeffrey City are bad, while South Pass can be freezing cold even in July. 

Cowboy Rides All 2,000 Miles Of Pony Express, Says Wyoming Weather Overwhelming

Wyoming Life

Food

Four decades ago, Chugwater was just one more dot on the map about to be swallowed by the modern economics of ranches consolidating and farms disappearing from “the flats.” 

It didn’t help when Interstate 25 came along in 1959 and whisked travelers past Main Street. By 1970, the population had dwindled to 188 residents.

The town didn’t take the trend lying down. They banded together to fight back and some of them did something a little audacious. 

Five ranching families decided to bottle up their town’s identity — grit, wind and all — and plaster it on a jar of Chugwater Chili spices.

“We were just trying to think of any kind of a business just to keep Chugwater alive,” Terry Baker recalled. “We were all farmers and ranchers who had been trying to think of ways we could help our Chugwater community survive. We just wanted to do our part, basically.”

The business those families started turns 40 this year. From its humble beginnings in a tiny, single-wide trailer, it’s now a large warehouse with a separate office/retail store that ships out hundreds of thousands of Chugwater Chili spice mixes and other products to 600 grocery stores across America.

Baker, a member of one of the five original ranching families, recalls a big brainstorming session that broke into groups at the school gymnasium to wrestle with ideas to help the town avoid vanishing.

Some of the ideas included a historical group, an economic development group and a beautification committee.

“So, like out of that, there’s little 'Welcome to Chugwater' signs that have planters around them now,” Baker said with a chuckle. “And the History Club is the best group and going still. It’s called Chugwater Historical Unity Group, or CHUG.”

Baker’s idea was for a mill that would turn the area’s hard red winter wheat into flour. But she and the other five ranchers were swayed by a completely different pitch, one that came not from Chugwater but from Cheyenne. An agricultural agent told them about a man named Dave Cameron who was a chili wizard, winning award after award at cook-offs.

For reasons known only to Cameron, he had branded his prizewinning recipe “Chugwater Chili” even though he lived in Cheyenne and had no formal tie to Chugwater. 

“I don’t remember all the ideas we took down,” Baker said. “But that particular one was not our idea at all.”

It was a compelling idea, though, and the ranchers embraced it — not least because Cameron had named his chili “Chugwater Chili.”

Baker doesn’t remember whether Cameron ever made them a pot of his award-winning chili to sell them on the idea of buying his recipe, but she does remember the very first championship cook-off. 

“We had thousands of people come out there to the Diamond Guest Ranch,” she said. “It was amazing.”

The festival was all part of an overall strategy to promote Chugwater’s newest business, and build a brand that would one day have national recognition.

Forty years later, the competition continues to be a magnet for the chili world. Many of the best chili cooks in the world call it a “bucket list” competition and make pilgrimages from as far away as Texas and Florida, just so they can say they have been there. 

After the Diamond Guest Ranch kids were grown, the event continued to grow but was moved into town, where it was placed at Staats City Park. 

Proceeds from the town’s signature event are donated each year to nonprofit organizations in town, from its volunteer fire department and community center to its FFA and FBLA youths. This year’s competition raised $17,000. 

The business, meanwhile, managed to ink several deals with restaurants that would exclusively serve Chugwater Chili.

“We made them sign an agreement that they wouldn’t add anything except our spices,” Baker said. “Because people so wanted to add I don’t know chili beans instead of pinto beans, which changes the flavor. You need to do just exactly what it says on the side of the container.”

That was another key piece in the strategy to build a business brand with longevity.

The company, formed by Jim and Marcelyn Brown, Lewis and Viola Voight, Dennis and Terry Baker, Jan and Carl Wilkerson, and Jim and Marc Kaufmann, was about as homegrown as it gets.

“They started packaging in bunkhouses on a ranch and also in basements,” Chugwater Chili’s present owner Karen Guidice told Cowboy State Daily. 

Eventually, they could afford a used mobile home for an office on Main Street.

The ranching families took turns staffing their new office and pitching in to help package bags and jars of chili spice for sale. Eventually, roughly 20 years ago, the business outgrew its single-wide and a modular home was purchased.

Guidice purchased the company 12 years ago after falling in love with the product.

She had been going to trade shows for the business to help promote the product. The word she heard most often was “Wow,” followed by “This is the best chili I’ve ever tasted.”

The product practically sold itself with a single sample. 

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"The Smell Of Christmas"}]

When she learned the owners were thinking about selling the company, she decided she wanted to be its new steward. That would be the best way to ensure the town’s namesake would go on helping Chugwater.

Under Guidice’s leadership, the company has grown an average of 25% each year, she told Cowboy State Daily, and it continues to add employees to handle the increased volume. 

In 2026, Guidice built a new warehouse and dedicated manufacturing area beside the original building, creating a footprint about six times the original mobile-home office.

Each jar of spice is still packed in Chugwater and the business now has at least four full-time positions and several part-time as well as seasonal Christmas positions.

The smell of Christmas for Guidice and her employees is chili, because that’s their busiest time. Orders pour in from all over the country for gifts of Chugwater Chili and other products, like its salsa or its dip and dressing mix. 

The store, meanwhile, has a fresh pot of chili going every day. That way any customers can taste-test on the spot.

Chugwater Chili has had many national shoutouts. Perhaps the best-known of these is in New York times bestselling author Craig Johnson’s first “Longmire” novel, “Cold Dish,” where it’s spotlighted as a favorite of a certain sheriff named Walt Longmire. Johnson has told Chugwater Chili that Walt would “definitely” be a Chugwater Chili fan in one of the company’s blogs, and that he’d eat it with a “healthy dollop of sour cream, cheese and green onions.”

But that’s not the only time Chugwater Chili has been recognized nationally. The Food Network spotlighted it in a feature showcasing the 50 States of Nachos, where it praised the ground beef nachos served at the Chugwater Soda Fountain, which are infused with the company’s award-winning secret seasoning recipe.

The Scovie Awards has also recognized the brand numerous times, most recently giving it second place in the stews/chili con carne category and third place for all-purpose dry rub/seasoning.

Several national grocers also carry the brand, including Safeway, Albertsons, King Soopers, and Smith’s Food and Drug.

And then there’s all the status brought by the nationally recognized Chugwater Chili Cookoff qualifier through the Chili Appreciation Society’s International. From there, winners can leapfrog straight into the national championship in Terlingua, Texas.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"textStyle"},{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Recipe For The Future"}]

Chugwater Chili is one of a handful of businesses in Chugwater that have helped keep the town from disappearing.

A small local economy has even been taking shape of late. There’s a food-hospitality cluster that includes the Chugwater Soda Fountain, which is Wyoming’s oldest working soda fountain with old-fashioned malts and ranch burgers, The Stampede Eatery with live music every Friday and Saturday night, and the Buffalo Lodge near the interstate.

There are also core services now, including the state’s first authorized charter school, a Wyoming Department of Transportation facility with a sizable staff, Chugwater Fuels, the Tri-County Mercantile with community essentials, and a fashion store called B & B Vintage that recently opened.

Some businesses, such as Tri-County Mercantile and the restored Soda Fountain, came about from much the same sentiment as Chugwater Chili. They’re owned by people who were newer to town, but loved the community and wanted to give back and see it grow stronger.

Their efforts at revival seem to be working, slowly but surely. The 2020 census estimated a population of 175, but more recent estimates put the number at 228. That compares to a peak of 287 in the 1960 Census.

Looking out at the next 40 years for Chugwater Chili, Guidice is pragmatic — apropos for a business that sells a practical and easy recipe for a quick and tasty meal.

“We’re going to continue growing, and offering a great product to a lot of people in the United States,” she said. “The more we grow, the more we can offer.”

That’s a recipe for the future that is still continuing to serve in a tiny, windswept town along I-25 that refuses to quietly disappear.

Chugwater Chili unnamed 2 8 9 26

<title>Chugwater Chili at 40: How Five Families Came Together And Saved Chugwater | Cowboy State Daily</title>

When agriculture took a nosedive in the 1980s, five ranching families in tiny Chugwater, Wyoming, decided to do something about it. They formed a company called Chugwater Chili, and 40 years later the chili — and the town — are still going strong.

Chugwater Chili at 40: How Five Families Came Together And Saved Chugwater

Headshot of Cowboy State Daily's Feature Reporter, Andrew Rossi.

Andrew Rossi

Around Wyoming

A GMC Yukon is smashed against giant boulders in a ravine off U.S. Highway 14-16-20 between Cody and Greybull. It’s been there for two years and could be there for many years longer.

, Suzanne Marie Cole drove the 7,000-pound SUV off the highway in what she claimed was a carjacking. She was arrested on two misdemeanor charges of probation violation, as it was determined she was intoxicated at the time of the accident.

Cole’s case has long since been resolved, but her Yukon is 

. Its windows and windshield are gone, anything of value inside is long gone, and it's riddled with bullet holes.

Pere Davison saw the Yukon while hiking in the Oregon Basin this past week.

“I hike up along that ridge all the time, but I have to go down and look over an edge to see the car,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It is hard to believe it got down to where it stopped. It had to go over some pretty big boulders.”

The Yukon is likely to become one of dozens, possibly hundreds, of vehicles left abandoned in remote, hard-to-reach areas in Wyoming. It’s just not worth the effort to recover it.

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"A Fruitless Effort"}]

Zac Beardall of Zac's Towing and Recovery in Cody knows exactly where the Yukon is. After Cole’s accident, the Park County Sheriff’s Office contacted him about recovering it.

Beardall isn’t one to be intimidated by a challenging recovery. He knows he could recover the Yukon, but as a business owner practicality takes precedence.

“There's no reason for it other than it's basically a fruitless effort,” he said. “Trying to devote an entire day and an entire fleet of equipment to a non-paying job is not exactly the best business decision.”

In these incidents, the owner is usually responsible for recovery costs. According to Beardall, that wasn’t an option for Cole.

“The owner didn't really make that choice,” he said. “It's more that they had no other option because they didn’t have the money or insurance to cover the operation as it stands. It’s not like breaking down on 1000 Wyoming Street and getting towed for $100.”

Because the State of Wyoming doesn’t cover recovery expenses, Beardall would have to cover it himself. It wasn’t worth it then, and it’s even less so now.

“That Yukon will never be roadworthy again,” he said. “It launched off a cliff and bounced up three boulders. The very second it lost momentum at the bottom of that cliff, it was never going to be roadworthy again.”

Two years later, the Yukon is in ever worse condition. It’s full of holes, created by rust and dozens of bullets, indicating it’s been used for target practice more than once.

When Beardall’s on the hook for a difficult recovery, he can recoup some of the cost by scrapping the vehicle. Even then, recovering the Yukon wouldn’t be worth it.

“The recovery’s not worth the scrap value,” he said. “Even the best scrap value on it wasn't ever going to be worth the recovery effort.”

[{"type":"text","marks":[{"type":"bold"}],"text":"Live And Let Live"}]

Given the Yukon’s location, it’s under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The agency might decide that recovering the vehicle is worth the expense.

Two years ago, a GMC Yukon flew off a highway in Park County and bounced off giant boulders in Wyoming's Oregon Basin. It's still there and likely there to stay because recovering it would be a fruitless effort, said the owner of a local tow company.

Daily Darwin: Saturday, December 28, 2024

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